A Brief History
The CIVA Charter School
District 11, Colorado Springs
The CIVA charter high school "opened its doors" to students in September 1997 after nearly three years in planning by a group of Colorado Springs teachers, representatives from the Hyde school, parents, and other community members. CIVA, whose name stands for Character, Integrity, Vision, and the Arts, is Colorado Springs' only charter high school serving a general population of students.
The guiding philosophy of CIVA was gleaned from the extraordinarily successful model of the Hyde School in Bath, Maine. The Hyde school and CIVA have enjoyed a long history together. Throughout our early years, Dr. Richard Van Scotter, the Governing Board President; Linda Page, the school’s first Principal; and Joe Gauld, the founder of the Hyde school, worked with CIVA staff to assist CIVA in creating a school based upon strong and effective principles, designed to ensure growth in character and academic success.
In 2006 our new Principal, Randy Zimmerman, took a team of CIVA faculty back to the Hyde School to renew our relationship and to get a fresh perspective on how the two schools could work together.
One of the most noteworthy improvements has been in the area of our parent program. CIVA continues to work closely with the Hyde staff to provide our parents with the best possible program. Pam Hardy the co-author of “The Biggest Job” is the facilitator for all of our parent seminars.
These seminars provide a great opportunity for our parents to focus on their own character growth and to assist with the continuously challenging enterprise of parenting.
Over the years, CIVA has developed into an excellent school attracting students from a very wide area. Approximately 50% of our students come from within district 11 and 50% from neighboring districts. Currently we have students attending from as far away as Monument to the north and Pueblo to the south.
CIVA was a part of District 11’s bond issue in 2004. With the monies approved by the citizens, we were able to purchase a building and renovate it into a new and permanent home. We are now located at 4635 Northpark drive (near Garden of the Gods and I-25). Renovating was truly a community endeavor. Our faculty, parents and students performed a lot of the demolition work and even helped with the construction. There is a lot of pride in our new facility.
We now have a new school with spacious classrooms, a performing arts center, a music room with smaller practice rooms, a complete art room, three computer labs, a fully equipped science lab and a small gymnasium with a weight lifting area.
The Future
CIVA has made incredible gains in the areas of academics and the arts over our 11 year history. We are now at the point of expanding our athletic program. We currently offer three sports and we are hopeful we can expand this to six sports for the 2008-09 school year.
